


Restore

by PrussianAwesomeness



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, spoilers from chapter 40 onwards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-22
Updated: 2013-08-22
Packaged: 2017-12-24 07:02:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/936820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrussianAwesomeness/pseuds/PrussianAwesomeness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No matter how they build up Trost again, Jean will always see wreckage and ruin of that faithful day 5 years ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Restore

**Author's Note:**

> There are spoilers from the manga so if you aren't caught up, proceed with caution. I took a few liberties with certain characters and their fates since we don't know what will happen to them currently.

The houses look the same.

It took a few years to properly restore the town after the battle, after the bodies were cleared. It was approximately five years since the Battle of Trost, since he and his friends had been disillusioned teenagers riding on the highs graduation brought them. Five years since the Colossal Titan appeared and let the titans into Trost. Five years.

Jean feels old.

It is a particularly warm day today and Jean is wearing a thin cotton shirt that is the same colour as the sky. He walks alone. Sasha and Armin offered to accompany him and he turned them down. They weren’t from here…this didn’t affect them nearly as much as it did him.

He passes by an old bakery he used to walk into, just to smell the freshly made bread as it baked in the ovens. The building is empty now. Jean wonders idly if the baker is still alive.

There are people walking around him. They don’t pay him any attention and Jean is thankful. Five years ago, Jean might’ve resented that. After all, he _was_ a top-notch soldier. He deserved the attention of beautiful women and admirers. That was before he had fought his first battle.

That was before everything had happened.

Jean knows that by the time he reaches base, Eren will have returned with the rest of the Scouting Legion’s top officers. Mikasa will be by his side, silent as ever. She rarely leaves his side now though strangely, Jean can’t blame her. His lip quirks upward as he recalls his old teen infatuation with the girl. He used to be so jealous of Eren, who unwillingly managed to draw the girl in without even trying.

A woman jostles past Jean as she passes, jolting him out of his reminiscing. He frowns and rubs his shoulder, continuing on his way. His old house is somewhere down this road, he realizes. His feet seem to have led him down this path without him realizing it. Old habits die hard, he supposes.

The houses he passes…they look brand new. He stares at one in particular and remembers a childhood friend who used to live there. They had once taken to the front of the house with paint and had started to paint it a bright yellow, before his friend’s father had noticed and yelled at them for an hour. They had been forced to wash the paint off, but no matter how hard they tried, that particular spot still retained a yellowish stain to it.

The stain’s not there anymore.

Neither is Jean’s friend.

Jean wonders if his friend survived. What ever happened to him? Maybe once his duties are done with, he’ll find his friend, just for old times’ sake.

It’s something he knows won’t ever end up happening but it’s nice to have a plan set, just in case.

He turns the corner and comes to a stop by his house – his _old_ house, rather. He isn’t quite sure what happened to his mother. Does she – if she’s still alive, that is – wonder what ever became of her son? Jean realizes that he never got the chance to tell his mother that he ranked 6 th out of all the soldiers from his squad. She would've been so proud. 

He realizes that from the top ten list, there are only six of them left. It leaves a sour taste in his mouth as he thinks about Bertholdt and Annie. In the end, they died fighting for what they believed in and Jean misses them. He remembers the way Reiner broke down after Bertholdt pushed him out of the way, saving him for the first time after all those times Reiner had saved him. Reiner hasn’t been the same since. Jean hasn’t gone to see him yet; he isn’t ready to see Reiner in his broken state. Reliable, kind, loyal Reiner…who can no longer recognize any of them or knows who he is. Reiner with the loud laugh and easy smile, who will spend the rest of his life behind bars and under watch for his part in the war. How did it all get like this?

He sighs and continues on his way. He is starting to reach the populated areas, the places where people have moved back and begun their lives again. Jean passes children playing on the streets, their laughs sounding foreign and unfamiliar to him. How long has it been since he’s laughed, since any of them have laughed? It’s not like Jean lacks material to make jokes out of; no one just seems to want to laugh anymore. He doesn’t blame them.

He passes by couples holding hands and families carrying food to their homes. He wonders if they ever look at their new homes and picture what they used to look like, picture the people who used to live there.

Jean remembers this area clearly. He used to play in this particular area throughout most of his life. Even when he got too ‘cool’ for playing around like a child, Jean remembers sitting by the steps and thinking about his future and the great things he was going to do in the Military Police. He wants to laugh; all the plans he had made as a child never even came true. Child Jean never had a chance at knowing what would be ahead of him.

Just like that, Jean comes to a stop. It’s like seeing three different things, one on top of the other. He can see himself at age 10, sitting by the steps of an old sweets shop, leaning against the cool walls as the sun sets. He can see what the sweet shop has become, a Butcher’s shop with assorted animal corpses hanging in display by the window.

And, Jean feels sick to his stomach at the irony of it all, he can see Marco. Lifeless Marco leaning against the window of the Butcher’s shop, partially devoured and thrown away, with no one to see how he died. He can feel a lump in his throat as he stands directly in front of the Butcher shop’s window, staring down at where Marco used to be.

It is only when the sun is beginning to set that Jean walks away back to base. He does not look around anymore, his head cloudy.

They can fix everything up. They can paint over houses and build homes from the bottom up. They can fix roofs and walls and doors and rooms. They can rebuild the entire Trost district.

But Jean will always see what it had been before, five years ago when the titans first attacked.

He’ll always see Marco’s dead body lying against the abandoned sweets shop.


End file.
